Are We Prepared Against Blackouts During the Energy Transition?: Probabilistic Risk-Based Decision Making Encompassing Jointly Security and Resilience

Abstract

Many major transmission power grids’ blackouts occurred worldwide, including grids with modern infrastructure, since the infamous one affecting parts of North America in 1965. Blackouts have had devastating social impacts (deaths, chaos, and severe discomfort due to disruption in sectors dependent on electricity, such as heat, transport, water, and communication) and economic impacts (exorbitant costs stemming from, e.g., the loss of production and equipment damage). The postmortem analysis of blackouts reveals root causes and enhances the understanding of grid operation, triggering organizational and technical improvements. Blackouts will continue to happen, at least because the complex grid neither was planned nor can be operated to cope with massive natural disasters damaging several grid components. However, despite previous experiences, there have been recurrent but avoidable blackouts due to the lack of fulfilling or inefficient handling of N-1 security, which degenerated into cascading outages.